


Prompt fics: Archive 81

by checkerspot



Category: Archive 81 (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 06:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16362626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/checkerspot/pseuds/checkerspot
Summary: A collection (well, currently there's one. But it may become a collection) of ficlets based on a prompt or challenge.





	Prompt fics: Archive 81

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: Snakes

"Snakes," Christine said. "Why did it have to be snakes?"

"It probably didn't _have_ to be snakes," said Nicholas, crouching down to get a better look at them. "It just… _is_ snakes."

Christine looked at him. "Really, dude? Come on. Raiders of the Lost Ark?"

"Hm? Oh." Nicholas was still looking at the creatures beneath them. 

It was a moonlit night, particularly bright as there were two moons, one large and full, the other smaller and waning slightly. Christine and Nicholas stood on the edge of a dock that stretched out behind them until it disappeared into darkness. About six or seven feet away from the dock was a little rowboat, bobbing gently upon the waves. It would have been a rather lovely scene, except for the fact that the ocean seemed to consist entirely of a writhing mass of striped snakes  
Christine looked through the slats of the dock. 

"What's that rhyme again? About how to tell which one's poisonous?"

"Red touch yellow, kill a fellow. Red touch black-"

"Friend of Jack, I remember now," Christine said, just as Nicholas finished "-venom lack." 

Christine laughed. "Man, of course you know the more pretentious version of rhymes about snakes. Well? What have we got?"

Nicholas frowned. "It looks like… both."

"Both kinds of snakes?"

"No, both kinds of stripes. It alternates, red yellow black yellow, then red black yellow black." He stood up and dusted off his knees. 

"So… what does that mean?"

"Who knows," he said. He took out his phone. It had two bars, which somehow seemed weirder than if it had full signal or none. He looked at Christine. 

"Uh- thanks for coming to do this with me."

"Hey, no problem. He's my friend, too. And- I missed you."

Nicholas gave her a small smile and said, "Me, too." Then he dialed the phone, and pushed 'record' on the cassette player in his pocket.

The now-familiar hum of- well, static- filled the air. Watching Static Man slide into existence had used to give Nicholas a headache, but now he almost enjoyed watching it. It felt like he was on the cusp of understanding something- until Static Man settled into his normal, vague human form and the feeling slipped away like a forgotten dream.

"Hey, my dude!" Static Man said to Nicholas. He didn't have an expression, but Nicholas still felt like he was being smiled at. "And Christine! Nicholas said you might come! How's the whole weird pirate thing working out for you?"

"Pretty good! And weird. Like, seven different kinds of weird. But mostly good weird."

"Awesome. We've gotta catch up while you're here. But for now…" he clapped his hands together, except instead of a clap they just made a louder fuzz of static. "What's the plan?"

Nicholas turned to the rowboat, bobbing close but out of reach. "I think the next step is to get into the boat, but-" he gestured at the snakes.

"Huh," said Static Man, tilting his vague head-shape down at them. "That's really weird. But it shouldn't be a problem, I'll just-" He stopped mid-sentence.

"You all right?" asked Nicholas.

"Well, the plan was to just pop over to the boat, but- it doesn't seem to be working." He shifted a little, his form fuzzing and stuttering around the edges. "Nope. Not happening." He sounded a little unnerved. "Think we're supposed to swim for it?"

"I hope not," Nicholas said.

"Could a snakebite even hurt you?" Christine asked.

Static Man shrugged, which was unsettling. "Not sure. Probably not." He walked to the edge of the dock. "Guess we'll find out." He sat on the edge, his limbs disappearing into his silhouette. Slowly, he extended a leg toward the 'water'. As he did, the snakes moved away as though repelled by the wrong end of a magnet, revealing glittering white sand below. He lowered his other leg, then pushed off of the dock to stand up. The tangle of snakes around him came up past where his ankle would be, if you could discern such a thing, but they left a little halo of sand about an inch around him. He took a few cautious steps forward, but the snakes continued to part. He turned back to the others. "I guess that works. Weird."

Nicholas sat down at the end of the dock, preparing to step in as well. "Sometimes these things are a lot easier than they look." As soon as his foot approached the snakes, however, they rose up in a hissing mass. He yanked his foot up so fast that he almost fell backward. "Or not," he said. He looked up at Static Man, who the snakes were still avoiding. "Maybe you're supposed to go on your own?"

"Hang on," Christine said. "I wanna try something." She knelt down and slowly lowered her hand towards the snakes. They parted the same way they had for Static Man. Sitting back, she pulled off the boot and sock from one leg and rolled up her linen pant leg. She lowered her bare foot into the snakes, and as before they didn't touch her. "I guess they don't like clothes?"

"Wonderful," Nicholas said dryly. "Barefoot snake wading."

Static Man looked down at himself. "You know, I never really thought about the fact that I'm basically always naked. Now I kinda feel self conscious." 

Christine removed her other boot. "I just hope they don't get too deep. If I have to walk through an ocean of snakes with no pants on, I am not going to be happy."

 

As it turned out, the snakes were only slightly above knee height when they reached the little rowboat. One by one, they climbed aboard. The boat was small, but stable. Static Man was seated close behind him, and while they weren't quite touching, he could feel something between a tickle and an electric shock on his back when either of them shifted. 

"Now what?" Christine asked. "There aren't any paddles." 

Nicholas looked back at the dock. "I don't think we need them," he said, watching it steadily recede into the distance. "I think the snakes know where we're going."

It took only a little while before they were in the middle of a sea of snakes that seemed to stretch out in all directions. Nicholas wondered if they had to eat, and where you'd get enough food for this many snakes. Behind him, Christine was regaling Static Man with her latest adventure. Nicholas let her words wash over them, only half listening, though occasionally Static Man would elbow him to get his reaction to a particularly interesting part of the story. He smiled, and tried to respond appropriately, feeling the strange shock ripple through him at the point of contact and then fade. 

It wasn't that he didn't care. He had missed Christine dearly. But the quiet sussurration of the constantly moving bodies around him kept drawing him into an almost meditative state, distant and disconnected. Oddly enough, it still smelled like the sea. Without thinking, he trailed one hand into the 'water', and a small snake seemed to defy gravity in its twisting midair loop to avoid touching his hand. He left it there, watching the snakes part around him. Occasionally he could see a head emerge from the tangle and appear to look at him, though it was probably coincidence. 

And then-  
"Guys," he said, holding up a hand to quiet them, "did you hear that?" 

They were silent, and it came again. It sounded like a person humming. For a moment the tune seemed almost like- but no, it was just a wandering voice, aimless music with no real melody. 

"Where is it coming from?" asked Christine.

"There," Nicholas said. The beach had appeared a distance away but still far too close to have appeared out of the empty sea, as though they had turned a corner and it had been suddenly revealed, even though it now stretched across the whole horizon. They could see strange buildings further back. On the shore, there was a figure in silhouette. Nicholas's first impression was that it was some kind of wretched creature, a strange monstrosity hunched in on itself. But then it lifted his head and he realized it had been a trick of the light. It was only a man, sitting with his knees pulled against himself. 

The man got to his feet and waved. Nicholas couldn't make out many details of his face, but the man's voice rang clear and cheerful across the space between them.  
"Oh! Hello! I'm so glad you are here! I have been waiting, and it was fine, but I have been so looking forward to meeting you!"

Behind Nicholas, Static Man stiffened and groaned. "Oh, no," he said. "Not this guy."

Christine tried to lean over his shoulder, trying to make out the man's features. "You know him?"

Static Man sighed. "Yeah. He's some weird cult guy- not The Cult, just a cult. They worship some god who's not a building? I don't know the details; I didn't really pay attention. He's such a creeper, and- well, you'll see." 

The boat got closer to the shore, and the man waded out into the snakes to meet them. "Static Man!" he said brightly. "I have not seen you in such a long time!"

"Not long enough," Static Man grumbled. 

"Mean!" said the man. "I hope you haven't been saying mean things about me to your new friends." 

He was up to his knees in snakes when the light caught his face, and Nicholas realized with a bolt of fear that his first thought had been correct after all. 

The man- the creature- was human shaped. Neither tall nor short nor fat or thin. It had all the regular human features in all the regular amounts, but- it was all wrong. At first Nicholas couldn't even tell _why_ it was wrong, just that he wanted, desperately, not to look at it any more. He forced himself to analyze. The best way he could think to describe it was that it was… warping, slightly. As it moved, its limbs stretched and contracted like they were a reflection in a funhouse mirror. Its features seemed to move around its face as though they had not quite been attached right, subtly shifting in size and location. It was unsettling. 

It reached the boat and wrapped its fingers, now long and grasping, around the edges of the wood. "Come, come!" it said, and began to tug the boat backwards to shore. "We have so many things to do and I have so many questions for you!" It smiled, and Nicholas hated it. 

"Uh," Christine said, "who _are_ you?"

"Oh!" it said, "I have been so terribly rude. I was just so very excited! My name is Rat. Once my name was Jacob, and now sometimes it is Jacob again. But you can call me Rat."

Nicholas swallowed, and tried to control his features. "A pleasure to meet you… Rat. I'm-"

"Nicholas Waters, and your sister Christine Anderson! I am such a big fan."

Nicholas turned back to Static Man, who shrugged. "How… do you know who we are?" The boat had reached the shore at last, and Rat pulled it just past the last thin layer of snakes that swarmed on the beach like lapping waves.

"The tapes, of course!" Rat said brightly. "I could not get them as easily as Dan, or as they happened, and I think I might have missed some. But it is always possible to find these things if you are interested, and I am very interested." He reached out a hand to help Nicolas up. His hand and fingers seemed to stretch towards him like a plant growing towards the sun. Revulsion warred with the desire to be polite to an apparent ally of unknown power, and eventually politeness won. Nicholas took its hand, and it pulled him up. It just felt like a normal hand, warm and solid. Static Man refused assistance, but Christine took Rat's hand without hesitation. Maybe there were other things like him in the strange sea she sailed now. 

Rat continued on as they moved up the beach. "I have been so invested in your story! I was happy to learn you had survived, though I was disappointed to learn that Aleister's house had been destroyed. I never met Aleister, but the house sounded wonderful."

"You didn't miss much," Christine said. "It was pretty awful."

"Oh, yes! Awful and impossible and beautiful and terrifying. So many spaces within spaces, and new and strange and interesting creatures that should not and could not exist but did, and-"

"Yeah, he's gonna go on like this for like, ten minutes," Static Man said sotto voce to Nicholas, as Rat did indeed continue to breathlessly rhapsodize about Aleister's awful torture chamber. 

"- and even though he seemed like he was not a very nice person, it is sad that he did not have someone who could see and appreciate and love his art for what it was. Kathy did not appreciate it, either, and she was very rude to you." He shifted closer to Nicholas, just past a comfortable personal space. "I would have shared my eyes with the two of you," he said. "Of course, I don't need to eat. But even if I did! I still would have shared them with you because that is only polite."

"Uhh, thanks," Nicholas said. They had gotten farther up the beach, and now they could see the strange buildings better. At first glance, they seemed unfinished, as though someone had abandoned construction halfway through, leaving the framework of the houses exposed. But looking closer, Nicholas could see that the beams and joists were not wood but stone, and had elaborate carvings all up and down them. The inside of the buildings seemed furnished, as well, and many had doors even though there were no walls around them to keep people out. Although, there didn't seem to be any people around, either. 

"So," Christine said, interrupting Rat's thoughts about cyclopses that consumed themselves (he was in favor). 

"What's our next move to get Static Man a body?"  
"I don't know!" Rat said cheerfully. (Behind him, Static Man groaned, "Seriously?" but Rat ignored him.) "But I am here, and you are here, and we are all in this place and that means that this is the place we need to be. Although," Rat said, turning to Static Man, "I still do not understand why you are so unhappy with your current body, just because you no longer have a face or hands or a physical presence or genitals. This one is much better than your old one."

"Easy for you to say," Static Man said, "You have all those things, weird as they are. Well, I guess I don't know about the last one-"

"I do not!" Rat said cheerfully. 

"- and I did not want to know, do not tell me why. Or how."

"Aww," said Rat. He moved closer to Static Man, peering at him intently. "But your old body was so boring and inefficient and ordinary. You have not even come close to truly understanding what this body can do. Oh, how I wish I could make bodies like this. It is so elegant and strange and powerful and very beautiful." He reached out a hand as though to stroke Static Man's cheek, but Static Man jerked back from him, instantly a foot further away. Rat looked longingly at him, and Christine got between the two of them. 

"How about we lay off the personal comments about people's bodies', huh?" she said. "Let's just figure out what we do next."

"All right," said Rat, clearly disappointed. Then he looked at Nicholas. "But if either of you would like a more interesting body, I would be so very happy to improve yours! I have so many ideas."

Static Man gestured wildly. "You see? You see what I mean? Total creep." Rat stuck his tongue out at him.

"We're not doing that," Nicholas said firmly. 

"Oh, fine," Rat said. Nicholas glared at him. "Don't worry!" Rat said. "I would never make any changes to your body that you did not want unless someone else was paying me to do so."

"That's... comforting," said Nicholas. 

"Let's just go," said Static Man. He brightened, which in his case was fairly literal. "Hey, I can move again!" He zapped instantly to one of the buildings, perching on an exposed rafter. "Yo!" he shouted. "Get over here, ya slowpokes!"

Christine laughed, and set out running over the sand to join him. Nicholas started after them, but slowly. He hadn't brought his cane- he didn't always need it, and today had been a good day but he was starting to feel a warning ache. He wasn't stupid enough to try running. Rat kept pace with him.

"I was also glad to hear that Dan was all right," Rat said. "He is a very good friend. If you see him, will you tell him that I say hello, and thank you, and that I am not angry that he abandoned that the beautiful new flesh that I made him, but that I am disappointed."

"I'll tell him," Nicholas said, "if I see him."

Rat stopped to look at him searchingly. Nicholas paused as well, waiting.

"Do you know, Nicholas Waters," Rat said, "you are a very interesting and curious person. I was beginning to worry about you when you began to call on Static Man so often and so terribly casually. He is simple and infuriatingly unaware of his true potential, but he is also very dangerous." Rat's dark eyes stared into his, seeming to grow larger and rounder. "I was afraid that you would not be careful because you did not understand what it means to trust something like him. But now- now I wonder. He has made you so many careless promises, and I wonder if it will turn out to that it was more dangerous for him to trust you."

Nicholas frowned. "I'm just trying to help him," he said. "He's my friend." His leg throbbed. 

"Oh, I know," said Rat. "But you can still be friends with someone you want to use." He grinned, suddenly, as though he thought Nicholas would be pleased to be quoted. The grin went too far up his face. "It is all very exciting. I don't know what to expect from you or from him or even from Christine! Oh, I am so happy that I can be here with you to see what happens next. The world and the worlds are so full of surprises." He had returned entirely to his earlier cheer, and looked ahead at the approaching buildings where Static Man and Christine seemed to be goofing off rather than seriously exploring. Rat moved faster towards them, a strange, loping stride. 

With a hiss, Static Man appeared next to Nicholas. "Hey, man, you okay?"

"I'm fine. It's just my leg."

"Oh, right," Static Man said. They walked in silence for a second, then he said, "Don't let him get in your head, okay? He's a fucking weirdo, but he's mostly harmless on his own. And- you know I wouldn't let him hurt either of you, if he tried."

"I know." He stopped suddenly, feeling something brush his still-bare feet. He looked down. A small striped snake, about the width of a finger, had slithered over his foot. He watched as it headed down the beach towards the dark and endless mass of its brethren. 

"You coming?" Static Man said, having gotten a few feet ahead of him. 

"I'm coming," said Nicholas, and followed.


End file.
